A new America-friendly Europe is just waiting to be born

By Padraic P. McGuinnessMay 13 2003

The fallout for the European Union of the Iraq war has only just begun. The clutch of central and eastern European countries which a few weeks ago signed up to join an extended union, mostly small but raising the number of constituent countries from 15 to 25, are not in the wake of the behaviour of "old Europe" inclined to be respectful and well behaved.

Nor are they all inclined to go ahead with plans to transform the loose confederation which is the EU, characterised by strong institutions promoting the economic aspects of the union, into a full-fledged federal union of the kind being advocated by former French president Giscard d'Estaing.

A developing analysis opposed to this argues that democracy is a function of the nation state, and a superstate cannot be democratic. Certainly the EU already suffers notoriously from a "democratic deficit".

One of the most interesting of the new European leaders is the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, elected by the Czech parliament in March, with whom I spoke at length in Prague some days ago (I have known him for several years).

He is a clear contrast to his predecessor, one of the great moralists of post-communist Europe, Vaclav Havel. But perhaps surprisingly for an economist who has declared his admiration for free market processes he differed from the outgoing Havel in refusing to endorse the Iraq war, though being far from anti-American.

He has no great interest in fighting the battles of 30 years ago, although as he says he is one of the few leaders of the post-communist entrants who was never a member of the Communist Party. But he is not, any more than Havel, a mere figurehead.

He says that the Czech constitution, of which he was one of the authors, gives an explicit role to the president in formulating foreign policy. The activist president with a prime minister and parliament is a democratic variation pioneered by France, and adopted with lesser force elsewhere.

Criticism of the EU institutions is not going to be suppressed just because the new members see the advantages of adherence. As Klaus said in a speech to a Munich economic summit at the beginning of May, "I do not criticise the more or less spontaneous European integration process (if it is only modestly institutionally supported) but its current unionistic and heavily institutionalised character".

He distinguishes between "Euroscepticism" in the sense of opposition to the EU and having a sceptical view of how the EU is working with its taste for overregulation. But he does not equate insistence on the importance of the nation state with fashionable attacks on globalisation.

Klaus is subject to vociferous criticism in the Czech press, though he enjoys strong support in the electorate. This is partly because of the hangover of former communists (these days calling themselves social democrats) and centralist Christian Democrats who try to claim the wholesale successful privatisation of the economy has not been a success - a view at odds with that of the OECD, which sees the republic as one of the bright spots of central Europe.

Since the constitution puts appointments to the constitutional court, a body Klaus has criticised for its uniformity of views, in the hands of the president, the forthcoming retirement of eight of the 15 members of the court will lead to another uproar. It is a familiar story: "How dare you reverse our successful stacking?"

These are old issues. Klaus, and the other new entrants into the EU, is going to be promoting a new Europeanism within what has become a sclerotic bureau- cracy dominated by France and Germany, which even the pan-Europeans of Britain are now beginning to reconsider sceptically.

Far from the creation of a new European super state, with a super bureaucracy, the expansion of the EU is likely to increase, rather than oppose, Europe's co-operation with the United States.